Clippers rain in 3-pointers to bury STA

DURHAM – Out of the gate, senior guard Travis MacDonald has been the player with the hot shooting hand for the Portsmouth High School boys basketball team.

He sure had some company Wednesday.

The Clippers opened the Bobcat Invitational Tournament in high-scoring fashion, beating St. Thomas Aquinas, 85-50, on a day when they made 11 3-pointers and came within one basket of their own single-game tournament record for points.

MacDonald, who dropped in 24 points in a Division II loss to heavyweight Pembroke on Friday and is averaging 18.7 points through his team’s first three games, had a team-high 16 that included four 3-pointers.

“I’m feeling it and I’m looking for my shot,” said the 6-foot off guard. “But there’s other players on this team that can shoot.”

The Clippers (2-1 overall) should get a stiffer test against Winnacunnet, a Division I program, as the round-robin continues here on Thursday. If they can win that, they’ll advance to Saturday night’s tournament championship game against whoever emerges from the other three-team “pod” made up of Spaulding, Timberlane and host Oyster River. The games do not count in the NHIAA standings.

The breezy opener gave Portsmouth coach Jim Mulvey a post-Christmas chance to deliver everyone heavy minutes, even though that was the plan no matter what. All 13 guys on the roster played, even before the outcome was decided, and 10 of them scored.

Sophomore guard Charlie Lehoux had three 3-pointers in getting 13 points. Guard J.C. Nova came off the bench to score 12 and sophomore forward Devonn Wilson-Miles had 11.

“It’s nice when you can play a lot of people,” said Mulvey. “We shared the basketball. No one was selfish with it. But it’s the little things that we’ve got to work on that are going to make us better.”

The 85 points were two shy of the tournament record set by Portsmouth – and an almost completely different cast of players – in its tournament win here last year, and would have been eclipsed if backup guard Tyler Dickenson’s 3-pointer had fallen as time expired.

It also came after a maddening opening 90 seconds that saw the Saints (1-3 overall) hit all three of their shots to take an 8-0 lead – a spurt capped by a Peter Hedberg three -- the Clippers turn the ball over on an inbounds play and a displeased Mulvey burn a timeout just 38 seconds in.

“We just came out flat,” said MacDonald, who got his team on the board with a 3-pointer after that run. “We want to come out and hit them first. They came out and punched us in the mouth, but we responded.”

First-year St. Thomas coach Dave Sokolnicki had no problems with the start. But like it has in its first three Division II games, his team has had trouble parlaying those good possessions, at either end, into a consistent stretch of them,

“We’ve got a long way to go,” he said. “They took it to us. They were the better team.”

Hedberg, a sophomore forward, led the Saints with 18 points and senior guard Jon Nartiff had 12. But aside from their opening burst, they had trouble sustaining offense and getting to the open shooters on defense.

“We’ve competed here and there,” said Sokolnicki, “but we haven’t put a lot of (good) possessions together in a row in a while.”

Mulvey praised the play of junior guard Donovan Phanor, who was adept in the rotations that are a staple of his team’s defense and also collected several heady assists; and 6-foot-4 forward Colin MacDonald, who had seven points and some big rebounds off the bench.

The Clippers practiced for 80 minutes in their own gym before Wednesday’s game and planned to do the same before playing Winnacunnet Thursday, a measuring-stick type of game that could serve them well before they go back to playing teams in Division II after the new year.

“That’s going to be a heck of a game,” said Mulvey. “They’re very physical. They’re guard-oriented, but they’re good. It’ll be a real good test for us.”